In the early 1980s, did you spend way too many hours (and quarters) in the Arcades getting your tail kicked by Defender? Now you can get revenge with Revenge of Defender for the PC. In the original game, your job was to save a helpless race of people from an alien invasion. Now you are called on to protect seven planets in the Scarcanian System from yet another alien invasion. With their peaceful planets and blue binary sun, the people of this system are your allies and suppliers of vital resources to your world.

Revenge of Defender puts you at the helm of StarRay, a ship capable of firing lasers and vaporizers. It is outfitted with shields and can fly up, down, right and left. As you patrol each planet (the playfield scrolls horizontally in both directions), blasting or exploding everything in sight, aliens will try to destroy your ship and each of the 10 resource installations on that planet. Planets include mountainous Gorbaxa, the jungle world of Sirion, frozen Sharlon, and technological Boldava, a world filled with power plants.

When you get shot by or collide with an alien, you will lose shield strength. If you manage to destroy a certain number of waves of aliens on a planet, you will advance to the next level. Landers, Blue Hunters and Air Buses are present on every world while dragonflies, hives, wasps, pterodactyls, silicon worms, bloodsucking plants, killer bees and other enemies begin appearing as you progress from world to world. A radar scan is available for use in watching incoming attackers.

Certain enemies when shot will release a letter icon that can be picked up for points, power or weaponry: A provides you with a temporary burst of speed; B is equal to 1,000 bonus points; C gives you continuous fire for 100 shots; I makes you temporarily invincible; P improves your laser for a short time; T gives your laser temporary rapid-fire capabilities; and V gives you a momentary boost of speed.

A round of Revenge of Defender ends when your shields have been eliminated (you only get one ship) or when all 10 resource installations on a single planet have been invaded or destroyed. When an alien does take over an installation, go ahead and destroy that installation because it will then become an enemy weapons base.

A side scrolling shooter, the object is to defend your colonies from various waves of attacking aliens. Revenge of Defender features layered scrolling screens, and new background artwork and enemies for each of 7 levels.

Starray is a fun side-scrolling shooter developed by Logotron and published by Epyx in the US as Revenge of Defender (probably to increase brand awareness by associating the game with Atari classic Defender. Despite the lofty name, though, the game isn't quite as much fun as Atari classic, perhaps due to sparse enemies and repetitive levels that resemble one another after a while. Still, for anyone looking for a quick shooter fix, Revenge of Defender just might do the job-don't expect it to be anything like the Atari classic, though.